


i am just your ghost (you can have us both)

by glitterforplaster (ineffableangel)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 07:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1735745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineffableangel/pseuds/glitterforplaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur had belonged to Mal since that first job; and, later, when Mal decided she belonged to Dominick Cobb, so did Arthur.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i am just your ghost (you can have us both)

**Author's Note:**

> warning for unreality as per canon. title from ["strangers" by empires.](http://music.weareempires.com/track/strangers-2)

Dominick and Mallorie Cobb married each other by the ocean; barefoot and beaming, sun-hot sand shifting beneath their toes. It was quick, it was beautiful, and it was only partially legal. It suited them perfectly. Arthur was their witness.

Arthur was their friend, Arthur was their protégé, and Arthur was their witness, because Arthur was _theirs_.

He had belonged to Mal since that first job, in Mumbai, rain beating against the yellowed window panes of the basement, since she pressed slender brown fingers to the inside of his wrist and murmured, " _Welcome back, dreamer,_ " gentle and lilting, her accent like the jagged edges of sea glass. She hadn’t needed to raise her voice over the thunderstorm, because when Mallorie Miles wanted to be heard, you would do anything to listen.

He was new to dreamsharing, then, and he remembers thinking that, in dreams, she seemed sharper, harsher; all red and gold and terrifying, an unstoppable force you wanted nothing more than to throw yourself in front of. In reality, she was soft and flawed and wonderful; in dreams she’d put a bullet between your eyes as soon as smile, but in life she couldn’t cook and always wore her socks inside out and the end of her laugh trembled like violin strings. She was strong, but she was breakable. She was human.

In the year that followed, she taught Arthur everything he knew about chemistry, and creation, and plausible deception. She taught him how to spin worlds from his fingertips and how to hold a lie under his tongue until it became a kind of truth, but she also taught him how to shrug off his jacket and dance in the middle of the street, how to show his dimples, how to open up for once in his life.

Mal was exceptional at fabrication, but she was also very good at being a real person.

Arthur was a beginner, and Mumbai was his beginning. He’d belonged to Mal since that first job, and, later, when Mal decided she belonged to Dominick Cobb, so did Arthur.

He knew them before they fell in love, before they were something together instead of anything alone. He was there when Dom got down on one knee in the middle of a warehouse, in the middle of a job, in the middle of the moment that would change everything. Arthur was there when Dom breathed, " _I had a dream about you, Mal,_ " saw every secretive glance Dom threw him, like he was asking for permission; the glint of a ring and the curve of Mal’s grin.

The Cobbs taught Arthur everything he knows about dreaming, about living. They took care of him, took him under their wing, took the angry boy with shaking hands and made him into a man with steady ones; made him whole again. They loved him and they made him believe it, believe in them, in himself.

Arthur has always thought the three of them balanced each other out.

Mal was volatile and fierce, a breathing riot under smooth skin and pearls, but so warm you could hardly help being drawn to her. Mal was a forest fire and a revolution and a flashlight in a circle of darkness. She was charming and dangerous and the best mother Arthur had ever seen. He’d never known a single person who could resist her; inevitably, you would be the moth to her vibrant flame. You would stand so close you burned.

Arthur was ( _is_ ) reason and emotion at the once, logical but never cold, neat lines and soft colors; a firm grip on his gun but his heart on his sleeve. If Mal was fire, Arthur was air; and Dom was earth, complex and clinging to life, protective of his children and all he created, far too willing to get his hands dirty for the things he knew he wanted.

Separately, they were dangerous, spiraling and self-destructive, prepared to throw themselves in front of trains just for the chance to believe in something. Together, they had something to live for; they would die next to each other or not at all, because they were family.

They were a pretty fucked-up family, for sure, far too close to call it anything near respectable. Arthur was the Cobbs' pet project and their brother and their lover all at once. Sometimes he thought they knew him better than he knew himself.

That’s the side-effect of being in other people’s heads for so long: you always need someone to remind you which one belongs to you.

**  
  
**

*

 

They offered him a place to stay, and then, slowly, in that quiet way of theirs, as easy as other people fall asleep, " _Why don’t you stay with us until you get settled?_ " became " _Welcome home._ "

He was filling out paperwork the first time he realised it; hand flying across computer keys, on autopilot, and then suddenly frozen, hovering above the _C_. He’d been about to type _Arthur Cobb_.

 _Arthur Cobb_ , he mouthed to himself. It sat perfectly on his tongue. _Dominick and Mallorie and Arthur Cobb._

He hadn’t had a last name in a long time.

**  
  
**

*

**  
  
**

When Phillipa was born, Dom was on one side of Mal, and Arthur was on the other.

Dom got to hold his daughter first, of course, but then he passed her to Arthur without hesitation, and that spoke louder than their lips on his cheeks or their coffeepot turned on before he was awake or their house with three pairs of shoes lined up against the wall.

He belonged here. He was theirs, and they were his.

Phillipa’s tiny hand closed around his index finger.

**  
  
**

*

**  
  
**

In dreamsharing, possibility is limitless, endless, as long as you can remember how to believe in something besides lies and wealth and the phantom of your lovers’ dying breath on your cheek. In reality, the rules of gravity are always holding you back.

If reality is your feet on solid ground, dreamsharing is a high.

Sometimes, you need someone to push you back down. Sometimes, you need someone to hold fast to your hand as you’re falling.

**  
  
**

*

**  
  
**

When Mal was gone, Arthur and Dom didn’t work anymore. They tried, for a while; policemen put their hands all over Mal’s things and Dom put his hands all over Arthur, which was essentially the same.

(They would always belong to her before they belonged to each other.)

" _I was thinking of getting away,_ " Arthur murmurs one night, hurt-honest, intentions stripped bare like the rest of his skin. " _I don’t think I can stay here. I love the kids, and I— you know that I— but I can’t stay here._ "

" _Yeah,_ " Dom says, but he’s not looking at Arthur. There’s an edge to his voice that terrifies them both. " _I can’t stay either. But unlike you, I don’t have a choice._ "

They tried; but the threads between their bodies had frayed one too many times. (Red like her mouth, red like the smudge of paint on her cheek, red like the last night-lit street she ever saw.)

" _There’s just too much emptiness between us, Dom._ "

He means both that there is empty space where Mal used to be, and that they are so empty they have enough to go around.

**  
  
**

*

**  
  
**

(Ariadne asks, " _What was she like, in real life?_ "

Arthur says, " _She was lovely,_ " but what he means is, _We were lovely_.)

**  
  
**

*

**  
  
**

Dominick and Mallorie Cobb married each other by the ocean.

Arthur has often wondered if, when they washed up on the shores of Limbo, they perhaps believed that no time had passed; that they had only imagined the neatly-pressed suit jackets in their closet, the sunny-side-up eggs, the wit like a knife. He wonders if they’d missed him as they grew old without him; if they’d even remembered the boy with the military past and the fucked-up control issues and the brown eyes begging for something he couldn’t name, and how they’d pressed his heart back into his ribs one meticulous memory-stitch at a time.

He wonders if, when presented only with sun-hot sand and salt water tears, they were able to carve a home out of a wasteland because they had done it once before.

 


End file.
